Sorry to Bother You

“A comedy?” you say. “A comedy about what?” 

Oh, why, it’s a delightful comedy about how horrible reality is!  (Sounds great, right?  But actually it is legitimately funny throughout, as entertaining as it is edifying.)

My husband compared it to the allegory of the cave and The Matrix. Tonally, it’s a lot like Jonathan Swift’s well known satire, “A Modest Proposal,” coincidentally one of my husband’s favorite pieces of literature. And it also reminds me a lot of that recent Italian winner of best foreign film, The Great Beauty–if that movie were made by Spike Lee and had a different plot.

Actually, Sorry to Bother You was written and directed by rapper turned director Boots Riley. While I’m only vaguely familiar with Riley’s musical career (I know his name, I’ve heard some of his stuff, I’ve seen the “Pranksa Rap” episode of The Simpsons), I’ve got to say I love his foray into writing and directing films. After seeing this, I think he needs to make more movies.

The Good:
Sorry to Bother You is a tough film to describe. It’s surrealistic and satirical. It borders on dystopian sci-fi, except it’s really more about the problems of the present (which, now that I think of it, is pretty much true of all dystopian sci-fi). It takes place in Oakland, mostly, if that helps.

The themes and message of the movie strongly resonated with us. Sorry to Bother You is not very subtle in its indictment of our society, but there’s no reason to be subtle if you’re telling the truth, and your message is urgent.

Watching, I said to myself, “Ah, I see. People who have money get it from some place, and if you don’t have money, then you probably never will. That checks out.” This character (Cassius Green) is able to make money for a while by further enriching the rich, but, of course, if he really wants to get somewhere financially, then he must do unconscionable things. If he takes the job, he’s being used, but he’s rich. If he doesn’t, he’s still being used, but he’s poor. It’s one of those stories. Will he do the unthinkable and betray his principles, or will he do the uncomfortable and betray the billionaire? (His name is Cassius, so let’s face it. He’s going to betray someone.)

Lakeith Stanfield (best known to me for playing the guy who gets abducted in the beginning of Get Out) gives a strong, compelling performance as Cassius Green (whose name suggests a destiny in satirizing capitalism or, perhaps, a future in boxing). Stanfield makes Cassius an incredibly sympathetic, appealing character, a guy who is easy to root for no matter what. Even if the film hadn’t taken such a strong, satirical turn, I would have happily watched this guy just sit around and work at a call center uneventfully for two hours.

The supporting cast is pretty great, too.

Tessa Thompson is turning into one of the most versatile actresses around. Every time I see her, she’s completely different. You’d never guess that the same person plays Valkyrie in Thor: Ragnarok, Josie in Annihilation, and Cassius Green’s girlfriend Detroit in this movie. (Well, I mean, you wouldn’t have to guess. She looks just like herself. But she inhabits each character in such a distinctive way.)

The supervisors in the lower level of the call center are all fantastic, each in his (or her) own way. Robert Longstreet gives the boss the perfect mix of seasoned cynicism and mild alarm (at his associates’ bumbling). As the high-fiving undertaker of middle management, Michael X. Sommers oozes creepiness. He’s so weirdly morbid, and yet so jazzed about it! It’s great. My favorite of this unholy trio, though, is Kate Berlant as Diana Debauchery. Berlant definitely makes the very most of every moment she’s on the screen, fighting hard to make a tiny part seem much, much larger. (That bit in the elevator nearly killed me with laughter. The line about the pink shirt made me laugh harder than anything else in the movie, though I cannot rationally defend this reaction.)

Squeeze is one of the most intriguing characters in the movie. Both my husband and I independently developed definite ideas about him, though the film never confirmed our suspicions. (It also never denied them.) Steven Yeun (better known to my family as the voice of Steve on Trollhunters) is perfect in the role.

Jermaine Fowler is pretty funny as Salvador, best friend and sometime co-worker of Cassius. (That war of kind words the two have is increasingly hilarious, very clever.) As Mr. ___, Omari Hardwicke barely gets to talk in his own voice, but when he does, it seems really special.

I loved seeing Danny Glover and Terry Crews and hearing Rosario Dawson (as a rather cheeky elevator), Lily James (as Detroit’s English voice), Patton Oswalt, and Forrest Whitaker (also a producer of the film in a role that has to be seen to be believed).

As Cassius’s “white voice,” David Cross is immediately recognizable and actually has a huge and critical role in the film, though he’s never seen.

Best of all, though, really is Armie Hammer as egomaniacal billionaire Steve Lift. What a wonderful part for Hammer! What perfect casting! I actually really like Hammer as an actor. I used to think of him as slightly underrated. Then after that recent, unprovoked hit piece I began to think of him as over persecuted. But maybe that random attack was actually good for his career because now everyone’s thinking of him. The delightful irony of the casting is reason enough to love his presence here, but his performance is actually quite electrifying. He’s like Leonardo DiCaprio in The Wolf of Wall Street, but without the hint of ambiguity. In this case, the actor most definitely has the same opinion of the character the audience does. (That, or he has the same opinion of the audience as the character does of expendable nobodies. I mean, Hammer is the great-grandson of a capitalist tycoon. Maybe he’s laughing at us, laughing extra hard because we naively believe he’s laughing with us. That seems excessively paranoid in this case, though. Probably he’s making his character look like an insane, megalomaniacal jackass and laughing with us at the horror of it all.) Hammer’s really good here. It may be his career finest work.

The movie has an amazing soundtrack, full of energy and heart. Equally energizing is the stylistic choice to (literally) drop Cassius into the room with the people he’s calling (so that he sometimes even physically interacts with them). The whole movie has a frantic, almost manic energy. Action in the face of desperation. I like it.

Cassius’s melancholy brooding on the inevitability of his eventual insignificance, his annihilation, his erasure–this line of thought really got my attention because I was saying the same kind of stuff to my husband in the parking lot before the movie started.

I like Detroit’s answer. Live now. Really live. Make every action, every moment count. Sure we can never secure the future and never recapture the past, but no one can take the present from us. We are right now. That seems to be the movie’s philosophy, too.

Somehow, Sorry to Bother You manages to feel simultaneously fantastical and intensely real. I kept thinking, “This was exactly my experience when I worked in a call center.” Then I realized, “Wait, I never worked in a call center.” But my sister once worked in a hotel reservations call center and wrote a book about it which I read and apparently vicariously lived. You don’t have to work in a call center in order to experience the resonance of Cassius’s early working experience, though. If you’ve ever worked in any job and gone to any pointless motivational meetings, then you can relate.

Similarly, you don’t have to be African American to feel a part of the struggle Cassius experiences. Without a doubt, his blackness is a part of his story. The plot focuses heavily on a new type of slavery, people as commodities, an art exhibit about Africa despoiled. So definitely if you are African American, this movie is talking right to you (just like Cassius on the phone drops right into the room with his clients). But if you’re anybody in the capitalist system (except like, maybe, the ghost of J.P. Morgan), the movie is speaking to you, too. We’re all victims (and all guilty), all enslaved by this inescapable, heartless, insane, profit-driven culture of ours.

After the movie, my husband and I were saying to each other, “Yeah, of course we liked this movie. It really punched the message that we keep talking about ourselves all the time.” It’s not subtle, but who has time for subtlety? (I wrote a much more striking and objectionable version of that last sentence, concluding with what subtlety gets you, but I deleted it because what subtlety gets you is kind of crude and definitely a spoiler. And, actually, more than kind of crude. And a really big spoiler. Really big.)

Best Scene:
As I watched, I kept saying to myself, “This is a great scene. This just might be the best scene.” But now all I can remember is that terrible moment when Cassius is forced to rap. It’s hard to get that out of your head. It’s hypnotically catchy, darkly funny in its audacity, and so sad, beyond sad, bleak and awful and tragic.

When I say it’s funny…It’s not the kind of funny where you smile or laugh. It’s the kind of funny where you gasp incredulously and grimace. What is wrong with these people? This is beyond awful. But you know it’s exactly what really would happen in real life. It feels very true. It never should happen, but it always would.

This is one of the moments that reminded me of The Great Beauty, this feeling that the party is out of control, that he’s almost in Hell at that party. I mean literally in Hell. Like you could imagine reading about this party in Dante or watching it as an episode of The Twilight Zone. The party itself is in control of the people there, not the other way around, and they don’t even realize it.

The moment also reminds me of a clip a student showed me once of Sacha Baron Cohen in costume as Borat convincing all of these people to sing a song with him about drowning Jews. (This was before the movie. Maybe from his show?)

The shot afterwards of Cassius in his lonely, defeated, isolated humiliation is so well done.

The moment also reminded me a bit of Django Unchained, so maybe Leonardo DiCaprio should have appeared in this movie. For some reason, I keep thinking of him.

Another great moment is when Cassius and his friend Salvador get into an explosive verbal war of endless pleasantries.

Best Scene Visually:
Early on there’s a scene in which a copy machine is going completely haywire (to an insane degree) in another room in the background. I love that.

I’m also a fan of the visual joke about the elaborate security code for the power caller elevator. Diana Debauchery gushes something like, “It’s so secure!” The hyperbole combined with her delightful antics had me in stitches.

There are tons of split-second sight gags in this movie. Some are quite bizarre, but most land.

Best Action Sequence:
Most of the actual action of the movie comes at the end in some sequences far too surprising and unique to discuss without spoilers.

I actually really love Detroit’s performance art at her gallery show. That reminded me of The Great Beauty, too.

The Negatives:
Okay, I sort of lied before. The movie does get weird (but not “really fast.” That guy was just being an idiot. No, just like in my first relationship, the disturbingly bizarre part comes in the final act (that sweet spot when you’re already hooked and too invested to leave immediately).

You might not like this last bit. The movie is surreal from the start, but in the final act, it drops any pretense of realism.

That’s not entirely true, though. Everything that happens still feels very much like what would happen in reality. It’s outrageous and unthinkable and unconscionable and true.  The situation just becomes more sci-fit than ever before. I actually think this works because it forces Cassius to a crisis. After this, there’s no going back.

But, yeah, the end is a little strange, and you might not like it.  It worked for me, but I also found it the least interesting part of the movie.

Overall:
I’m so glad we saw Sorry to Bother You. We absolutely loved it with its biting social commentary, touches of pathos, great performances, genuine laughs. I hope Boots Riley makes more movies in the future. My husband and I will definitely go see them. He’s not bothering us at all. (No, wait! I mean, he is bothering us! That’s the whole point of all the social commentary, right?  To bother us?  To spur us to action?) Anyway, the point is, the movie’s fantastic.  If you don’t mind things getting weird, you should give it a try.